"bob's game" A curious gem filled with hype and high hopes - 8/10

Hello everyone! For my first review, I'll start with a very obcsure game only released with a demo so far. Has anyone ever heard of Robert Pelloni? He's a video game maker.

Wait, you haven't? Oh, well that makes sense. He's basically been in his room the past 5 years creating a beautiful video game.

"bob's game" is the video game Mr. Pelloni has been working on for quite some time. It is his childhood vision brought to life, and as far as the general gaming crowd can see so far, this vision has sure been transformed into something great. So far, only the demo for "bob's game" has been released, which can be found at http://www.bobsgame.com . I'll go through the highs and lows of the demo, and then give a prospective rating.

As a "bob's game" fan, I promise to remain neutral in this review.

Upon booting up this homebrew demo, we are greeted with two very humorous kinds of sarcastic plays on traditional video game boot up screens. First of all, the warning screen shows a list of silly cautions, such as "Do not jab stylus into eye." Afterwards, the title screen loads. "Press A" hovers on the bottom screen, and after pressing A, "Now Press B" appears. After pressing B, "Now Press C", which hangs on the screen for a few seconds, soon replaced by "Just kidding :}". Technically, this is nothing revolutionary, but it just goes to show how much humor Mr. Pelloni tried to put in this game very early on.

Now, onto actual gameplay. It is amazing how fast and seamless the gameplay actually is. Although you cannot move as fast through doors as promised in the demo videos released sometime ago, the travel is still better than many games. Holding "B" makes you run at least 5 times faster, which sometimes makes things a little unbalanced. Why would you bother to walk in general if you could go 5 times faster? Perhaps a better option would be to hold "B" to walk instead.

Actual navigation can be quite hard, unfortunately. In the house, where most of the demo takes place, I had no idea there was a gap between two boxes because the 2D, closed-up view doesn't give a very good view of what is actually possible. Also, a key doorway was almost invisible because it lined up exactly with the wall, with only a small, discreet doorknob to signify a doorway. Overall, there is much to be improved in these tight areas.

HOWEVER, HOWEVER, HOWEVER, the outdoor landscapes (so far, mind you) are fantastic. Things were limited in this demo, but what was revealed was extremely enjoyable. This is where fast running really becomes handy. It's like a one-click bicycle from Pokemon, except it doesn't do all those crazy tricks. Silly Pokemon series, always showing up all other games in the ways of biking/moving around.

Let's talk about characters now! There are over 200 completely unique characters in this game; quite a feat, especially by one person. The main characters stems the game's slogan: 'Thank Yuu for playing'. Yuu is the main character, which makes things feel odd to say, and yet, kind of cool, because a 2nd-person name is being used in 3rd-person. You can't imagine all of the weird looks given to me when I exclaim to my friends, 'Yuu is so cool!" Or, at least, something along those lines.

So far, you can tell Mr. Pelloni put a lot of time into the little things, making sure everything was right. But you may be astonished to know EVERY graphic was drawn pixel by pixel.

Graphics by Final Fantasy games released on the DS easily beat the graphics on "bob's game", but the clean look of those of the latter are quite noteable. To be fair and to keep rationality in place, I can't give extra points because the graphics were drawn pixel by pixel, as you couldn't give extra points to Mr. Pelloni for making this game on his own. As with any game, the final product is the only thing that actually matters.

The last notable subject in "bob's game" are the minigames. "Tetrid", a Tetris ripoff/spoof, was the only minigame released in the demo. On the outside, this is just a simple Tetris copycat. However, upon playing this small gem, there is so much more strategy hidden inside. You have to completely lose all Tetris strategy and think of things in an entirely new way. Tetris DS couldn't pull this off, so I applaud Mr. Pelloni for this.

The one thing missing right now is Storyline, supposedly the biggest surprise and best accomplishment in the game. All we know right now is "Yuu was born with a gametoy...", as in the character Yuu was born with a Gameboy ripoff, called Gametoy ingame, for no known reason. You could imagine many possiblities for a storyline, but I guess we'll all have to wait for the real story.

Once again, I must give this a prospective, general rating, that hopefully will resemble the final game. As is now, with the benefit of the doubt for the storyline, I give this game an 8/10. Fix up some cluttered areas, put in some options to alter gameplay to the players for their experience, and give us a storyline to make this rating even higher in the final game.

In the mean time, we'll all pray this doesn't turn into another "Duke Nukem Forever" scenario.

-Zack

Questions? Comments? Concerns? E-mail me at revyuu@gmail.com